Trump reckons you need an ID to go grocery shopping

By John Wagner

2 August 2018 — 2:56am

An assertion by US President Donald Trump that identification is required to purchase groceries prompted a cascade of criticism from the media and his adversaries.

During a freewheeling rally in Florida on Tuesday night, Trump was making the case for stricter voter identification laws, a cause that is broadly popular among his conservative base, when he made the bizarre claim about grocery shopping.

"If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID," Trump said at the event at the Florida State Fairgrounds. "You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture."

Although photo identification is required for some purchases, such as alcohol or cigarettes, by and large, it's not.

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Conservatives have floated the idea of requiring every voter in the US to show ID (currently, new voters who register by mail or don't provide ID when they register are required to show ID when they front up at a polling booth). Democrats say the idea would disproportionately reduce turnout among minorities, who, on average, have lower incomes and are less likely to have valid IDs. Voter fraud is also almost non-existent in the US.

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult-film star Stormy Daniels, was among the scores of critics who took to Twitter to point out the flaw in Trump's claim - and, in his case, put in a plug for a possible 2020 presidential bid to challenge Trump.

Daniels is seeking to void an agreement with Trump under which she received $US130,000 ($175,000) to stay silent about an alleged affair.

For many, Trump's claim brought to mind reports of President George H.W. Bush expressing amazement upon seeing a supermarket scanner during his 1992 reelection campaign.

John Dean, the former White House counsel under President Richard Nixon, was among those to draw a comparison between the two episodes.

Some of Trump's opponents were quick to jump on comments he made at the Florida rally.Credit:Bloomberg

"George H.W. Bush lost an election for not having any idea how a electronic scanner in a market worked," Dean wrote on Twitter.

"Trump thinks you need photo ID to buy groceries. May his ignorance come back to defeat him, not to mention his ignorance is 10,000 times Bush's!"

Kaili Joy Gray, the managing editor of the liberal website Shareblue, also sought to portray Trump as out of touch.

"This man has never bought a carton of milk in his life, has he?" she asked on Twitter.

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Media covering Trump's rally were among the first to pounce on Tuesday night as the President rallied the faithful and promoted the Florida gubernatorial candidacy of Congressman Ron DeSantis.

"Honest question: What's the last time he's bought groceries?" wrote Zeke Miller, a White House reporter for the Associated Press.

Jim Acosta of CNN, a frequent target of criticism by Trump, also weighed in with a tweet, writing: "Trump out of touch here... you don't need an ID to buy groceries".

Asked the following day about the last time the President, a Manhattan billionaire with his own fleet of private jets and helicopters, went to a supermarket, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: "I'm not sure. I’m not sure why that matters, either."

Pressed by journalists who said IDs are not required, Sanders said Trump was actually referring to buying beer and wine in supermarkets. A reporter replied that the President does not drink.

"He’s not saying every time he went in," she said. "He said, ‘When you go to the grocery store'. I'm pretty sure that everybody in here who’s been to a grocery store that’s purchased beer or wine has probably had to show their ID. If they didn’t, then that’s probably a problem with the grocery store."